Better Open Source Communities Through Data

An anonymous reader writes "Using exhaust data from Bugzilla, David Eaves describes how the Mozilla Metrics team is creating dashboards to improve the contributor experience and give open source community managers better situational awareness."

Bugzilla alternatives

[Compaqt]

While it's great that Bugzilla is provding this, I'm wondering if anyone can post their experience with Bugzilla alternatives.

Bugzilla's great ... for developers.

Is there anything that could be just to allow customers to directly enter bugs? Something Trac-like?

Re:Bugzilla alternatives

[dr2chase]

I have no trouble reporting bugs. If there's any obstacles along the way to reporting the bug, I bail, and simply post them on my blog [wordpress.com]. With snarky commentary, of course, because by then I'm in a bad mood.

Best of all, is when random strangers with the same bug, find my blogged bug report instead of the bug database, and then start posting comments on it.

Years ago, a friend of mine showed me the "killer app for Python", and it was the stack traces. When their (Python-based) product crashed in the field, its driver would bundle it all up in a zip file, and ask the user for permission to forward it to the developers, with the usual reassurances that all data discovered in the process would be treated as confidential. Bug report arrives, the stack trace (with variables etc, it's Python, right?) contains all the necessary info, the next interaction with the customer, is to tell them where to download the bug-fixed version of the product. "No time wasted on annoying human interaction, customer thinks we are attentive geniuses, everyone productive and happy."